Foreign Visits To United States Decline Sharply In March 2025

To be honest, this is probably the least of our problems at this point, but we finally have some concrete data as to the decrease we’re seeing in foreign visitors to the United States. I have to imagine this is only the tip of the iceberg.

US sees roughly 20% drop in foreign visitors in late March

We’ve obviously heard a lot of stories about decreased foreign travel demand to the United States, for a variety of reasons. However, that information has largely been anecdotal, or has been based on forecasts rather than actual travel data, since there’s a gap between when people book tickets and when they actually travel.

Along those lines, US Customs and Border Protection publishes the number of passengers traveling through US immigration checkpoints. Axios did an excellent analysis on how those trends have evolved for the 10 busiest airports in the United States.

March 2025 is where we’ve really started to see a change in arriving passenger numbers. According to this research, which compares year-over-year numbers:

• In late March 2025, the US saw a decrease of over 20% in terms of foreigners passing through US immigration checkpoints at the busiest airports; by March 28, that number got slightly better, with a decrease of “only” 18.4%
• Conversely, we saw a significant increase in Americans traveling abroad, with late March seeing an increase of nearly 14%

It goes without saying that this is a massive change, especially when you compare the increase in Americans traveling abroad with the decrease in foreigners traveling to the United States (which, all of that is terrible for the US tourism industry in general, as foreigners don’t spend their money here, and Americans spend their money abroad).

It’s also worth acknowledging that Easter is in late April this year, while it was in early April last year, and to some extent, that could impact demand. However, the direction of demand seems to me like it’s indicative of a larger shift. We haven’t seen this significant of a negative year-over-year change in demand since the start of the pandemic.

Furthermore, I’d expect the gap to continue to grow, simply because many people book their tickets months in advance. After all, there are a lot of people who may not feel great about traveling to the United States, but they already had non-refundable travel booked, so they completed their trip. We’ll mark this as “developing” for now, and will revisit in the coming weeks.

Interestingly, executives at major global carriers have largely reported that they haven’t seen a huge drop in long haul bookings. I imagine that largely reflects that Americans have filled the gap left by foreigners. However, I suspect that’s about to change as well…

Just how much trouble are US airlines in?

Okay, admittedly that question applies to the entire economy right now, and it’s anyone’s guess how the coming days and weeks play out. Obviously all the markets are taking a beating right now, but airlines are among the hardest hit.

It’s pretty remarkable to see United’s stock be worth half as much as its all-time high, right around when Trump took office, a bit over two months ago. It’s not like most other airlines are doing much better, though…

Anyway, the pressure that airlines are currently facing are immense. We’re now seeing evidence of a strong decrease in demand for travel to the United States among foreigners. However, if things continue the way they are, the next challenge will be a decrease in demand among Americans.

To avoid getting too political, I’m not attempting to debate the long term merits of the concept of tariffs, and/or of building a more independent economy. However, as Trump himself acknowledges, there’s going to be some short term suffering. That’s what I’m focusing on, because as we’ve learned over the years, airlines can’t last very long during downturns without some sort of bailouts.

When it comes to economic suffering, airlines are typically first in line:

• The stock market getting absolutely battered isn’t good for the premium leisure demand that airlines rely on, which largely consists of people who may pull back their spending, having less money to play with
• Prices going up in the short term due to tariffs will put more financial pressure on average families, and increase costs, leaving less money for discretionary travel
• With less of a focus on global trade, we’re going to see a reduction in international business travel

It seems like airlines are going to get hit from all sides here. While we’ll see how this evolves in the near future, for airlines, it sure feels like the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, just over five years ago. For the sake of everyone, I hope this normalizes soon, because with the direction things are headed, it’s not going to be pretty…

Bottom line

We now have data that shows a sharp decrease in foreign visitors to the United States in recent weeks. That hasn’t necessarily been that huge of a deal for airlines, since we’ve seen an increase in Americans traveling abroad (it’s a different story for the US tourism industry at large).

However, when you combine that with stocks taking a massive beating and tariffs shortly raising the costs of everyday goods, that’s unarguably going to have an impact on travel demand among Americans, and that’s very bad news for airlines.

I hope something significant changes in the coming days or weeks, or else airlines are about to face a whole new round of challenges…

What do you make of the demand patterns we’re seeing, and what it means for airlines?